The present invention relates to answering devices and, in particular, to equipment providing a predetermined message to a plurality of callers.
Known answering machines detect a ring on a telephone line to activate an answering device. A common response is to apply a predetermined recorded message to that line. These systems however, have no ability to adapt the message according to the sequence of callers.
There are commercially available speech synthesizers which are in the form of a microcomputer having a read only memory. This read only memory contains information necessary for the microcomputer to produce synthesized speech.
It is a common promotional technique for radio stations and other broadcasters to offer prizes to the caller who calls first, second, one-hundredth, etc. These contests are performed with telephone operators who quickly answer the call with a prescribed message such as: "you are the third caller." Obviously this process can be time consuming, especially when many callers respond. Moreover, it is necessary even after receipt of the winning call, to inform subsequent callers that they called too late.
Accordingly, there is a need for an answering device which is able to provide synthesized speech and to provide different messages to different callers in a predetermined sequence.